BluSky Puts a Cash Buyout Beside the Funded Seat From 1 October, and Doubles Its Standard Payout Minimum to $500
BluSky Trading has told its traders that from 1 October every evaluation will lead to a brokerage account that starts at a zero balance, that each of those accounts will run with the firm’s Bonus Vault, and that the minimum payout across all plans will be set at $500. Alongside that, the firm is offering a cash alternative to the funded seat itself: a trader who is called up can decline the brokerage account and take a one time buyout worth half of that account size’s drawdown, then return to evaluations after a cooldown. The buyout is the eye catching part of the announcement. The payout minimum is the part most likely to change what a funded trader actually receives, because BluSky’s own help centre currently puts the standard baseline minimum withdrawal at $250, which means the new figure is double the one in force today.
What BluSky Says Changes on 1 October
The changes were sent to the firm’s mailing list on 25 September 2026 under the subject line describing what is changing on 10/1, signed by Mukarram Ismail, Chief Marketing Officer of BluSky Trading. Every element below is the firm’s own description of what it intends to do, and the section after this one sets out which parts appear on BluSky’s public pages and which do not.
The firm states that a new path from sim funded to brokerage will apply across all evaluations. When a trader is called up, the brokerage account starts at a zero balance with a drawdown matching that account size, and every brokerage account runs with the Bonus Vault. In place of taking that account, a trader can choose a one time buyout worth half of the account size’s drawdown, and after a short cooldown returns to evaluations. The firm’s own worked example uses a 50K account: either a brokerage account carrying a $2,000 drawdown, or a $1,000 cash buyout. The payout minimum is standardised at $500 across all plans. Existing accounts are unaffected, and the firm says the changes apply going forward only.
BluSky also says more scaling options and faster payouts are coming soon. That carries no rules, dates or figures, so it is not treated here as a change.
The Payout Minimum Is the Part Worth Reading Twice
A single standard figure sounds like a simplification, and in one sense it is. What it also does is raise the bar on every plan that sits below it. BluSky’s published payouts article puts the standard baseline minimum withdrawal at $250, and separately allows payouts on Orbit Brokerage accounts above a $100 profit threshold. Setting one minimum of $500 across all plans therefore doubles the standard baseline and multiplies the Orbit brokerage threshold by five.
The practical effect is on how long money sits in the account, not on how much a trader eventually keeps. The profit split is unchanged, and the same article states that all payouts run at 90% to the trader and 10% to BluSky unless a Risk Team Review changes it. Payouts requested before 11am ET on a trading day are processed the same day, and the firm requires one meaningful profitable day between payout requests. So a trader on a 50K seat who could previously withdraw at $250 will now need to reach $500 of profit before the first withdrawal is possible, which on that account size is a full one percent of the starting balance held at risk for longer than before.
That matters, because the period between passing and the first successful withdrawal is where most funded accounts are lost. Our guide to prop firm payout proof covers what a firm will actually verify and pay.
What BluSky’s Own Pages Confirm, and What They Do Not
The announcement was checked against BluSky’s public help centre before this report was written, and the result is worth stating precisely.
Confirmed, with one important qualification. A brokerage account starting at zero already exists, but only on the firm’s Orbit plans, where the published article states that the live account starts at $0.00 and the simulated gains are moved to a vault instead. On standard plans the published position today is different: up to $10,000 per account, minus payouts already taken, transfers across as the live starting balance. So the 1 October change extends the Orbit structure to every evaluation rather than inventing something new, and standard plan traders see the largest change.
Also confirmed: the drawdown figure in the firm’s worked example. BluSky publishes Orbit drawdown limits of $2,000 on a 50K account, $3,000 on a 100K, $4,500 on a 150K and $3,000 on a 200K. The $2,000 on the 50K matches the announcement exactly, which is the strongest corroboration available for the buyout arithmetic. The published 200K figure sits below the published 150K figure, and BluSky has not explained that anywhere we could find, so a trader on the largest plan should get it confirmed in writing.
Not confirmed at the time of writing. The $500 minimum does not appear on the firm’s public pages, which still carry $250 and $100. The buyout is not mentioned anywhere in the public help centre, in any amount or under any name. And the vault is called the Profit Vault on the help centre rather than the Bonus Vault used in the announcement, with a published mechanic of an eligible $1,000 cash bonus released from the vault for every $10,000 earned and withdrawn from live trading. The firm has not said whether those are the same product under two names. Separately, the help centre does describe a mandatory 30 day cooldown, but that applies to breaching drawdown on a live account, which is a different event from the cooldown the announcement attaches to taking a buyout. The two should not be read as the same rule.
What the Buyout Is Actually Worth to a Trader
Take the firm’s own example at face value. A trader who passes on a 50K plan chooses between $1,000 in cash today and a live brokerage account that starts at zero and can lose $2,000 before it breaches. The cash is certain. The account is an option on a stream of 90% profit shares, priced against a breach that costs a 30 day cooldown.
Applying the half of drawdown rule to the firm’s other published Orbit drawdowns would imply $1,500 on a 100K, $2,250 on a 150K and $1,500 on a 200K. BluSky has not published those numbers, so treat them as arithmetic from its stated rule rather than as firm figures.
The test is simple. Take the buyout when realistic expected profit from that live seat, after the split and after allowing for a breach and the cooldown, is less than half the drawdown. For a trader who passed once and is not confident of repeating it live, that is a straightforward yes. For someone who has already traded a funded account through to repeated withdrawals, it is giving up the asset at a discount. Either way the option puts a floor under an evaluation pass, which is rare: most firms let a passed trader walk away with nothing. How those passes are won and lost is set out in our guide to evaluation rules, consistency and drawdown, and the current pricing on BluSky’s own plans is tracked on our BluSky discount code page.
What This Means for the Broader Prop Industry
Almost every firm in this sector describes the funded seat as the prize and then never says what it is worth. BluSky has now attached a number to it. That is unusually legible, and it changes the conversation from whether a firm is generous to whether its seat is worth more or less than the cash it will hand over instead. A trader who can compare $1,000 against a $2,000 drawdown is doing something closer to valuation than to hoping. Expect other firms to be asked the same question, and some to dislike it, because a published buyout is also an admission of what a firm thinks the average passed trader will earn.
The second lesson is about how these announcements are shaped, and it is not specific to BluSky. The headline here is an easier path to brokerage. Sitting quietly inside the same message is a payout minimum that doubles. Neither statement is untrue and neither is hidden, but only one of them is in the subject line. The reliable habit is to check a firm’s own rules pages against its own announcement in both directions. On that test BluSky comes out reasonably well, because its help centre is detailed enough to check against at all, which is more than much of this industry manages. The measure that survives every rewrite of the rules is still what a firm pays and how fast, which is why the prop firm payouts tracker remains the comparison that matters most.
